--To Elizabeth Robins Pennell


'O mes cheres Mille et Une Nuits!'--Fantasio.

Once on a time
There was a little boy:  a master-mage
By virtue of a Book
Of magic--O, so magical it filled
His life with visionary pomps
Processional!  And Powers
Passed with him where he passed.  And Thrones
And Dominations, glaived and plumed and mailed,
Thronged in the criss-cross streets,
The palaces pell-mell with playing-fields,
Domes, cloisters, dungeons, caverns, tents, arcades,
Of the unseen, silent City, in his soul
Pavilioned jealously, and hid
As in the dusk, profound,
Green stillnesses of some enchanted mere.--

I shut mine eyes . . . And lo!
A flickering ****** of memory that floats
Upon the face of a pool of darkness five
And thirty dead years deep,
Antic in girlish broideries
And skirts and silly shoes with straps
And a broad-ribanded leghorn, he walks
Plain in the shadow of a church
(St. Michael's:  in whose brazen call
To curfew his first wails of wrath were whelmed),
Sedate for all his haste
To be at home; and, nestled in his arm,
Inciting still to quiet and solitude,
Boarded in sober drab,
With small, square, agitating cuts
Let in a-top of the double-columned, close,
Quakerlike print, a Book! . . .
What but that blessed brief
Of what is gallantest and best
In all the full-shelved Libraries of Romance?
The Book of rocs,
Sandalwood, ivory, turbans, ambergris,
Cream-tarts, and lettered apes, and calendars,
And ghouls, and genies--O, so huge
They might have overed the tall Minster Tower
Hands down, as schoolboys take a post!
In truth, the Book of Camaralzaman,
Schemselnihar and Sindbad, Scheherezade
The peerless, Bedreddin, Badroulbadour,
Cairo and Serendib and Candahar,
And Caspian, and the dim, terrific bulk--
Ice-ribbed, fiend-visited, isled in spells and storms--
Of Kaf! . . . That centre of miracles,
The sole, unparalleled Arabian Nights!

Old friends I had a-many--kindly and grim
Familiars, cronies quaint
And goblin!  Never a Wood but housed
Some morrice of dainty dapperlings.  No Brook
But had his nunnery
Of green-haired, silvry-curving sprites,
To cabin in his grots, and pace
His lilied margents.  Every lone Hillside
Might open upon Elf-Land.  Every Stalk
That curled about a Bean-stick was of the breed
Of that live ladder by whose delicate rungs
You climbed beyond the clouds, and found
The Farm-House where the Ogre, gorged
And drowsy, from his great oak chair,
Among the flitches and pewters at the fire,
Called for his Faery Harp.  And in it flew,
And, perching on the kitchen table, sang
Jocund and jubilant, with a sound
Of those gay, golden-vowered madrigals
The shy thrush at mid-May
Flutes from wet orchards flushed with the triumphing dawn;
Or blackbirds rioting as they listened still,
In old-world woodlands rapt with an old-world spring,
For Pan's own whistle, savage and rich and lewd,
And mocked him call for call!

I could not pass
The half-door where the cobbler sat in view
Nor figure me the wizen Leprechaun,
In square-cut, faded reds and buckle-shoes,
Bent at his work in the hedge-side, and know
Just how he tapped his brogue, and twitched
His wax-end this and that way, both with wrists
And elbows.  In the rich June fields,
Where the ripe clover drew the bees,
And the tall quakers trembled, and the West Wind
Lolled his half-holiday away
Beside me lolling and lounging through my own,
'Twas good to follow the Miller's Youngest Son
On his white horse along the leafy lanes;
For at his stirrup linked and ran,
Not cynical and trapesing, as he loped
From wall to wall above the espaliers,
But in the bravest tops
That market-town, a town of tops, could show:
Bold, subtle, adventurous, his tail
A banner flaunted in disdain
Of human stratagems and shifts:
King over All the Catlands, present and past
And future, that moustached
Artificer of fortunes, ****-in-Boots!
Or Bluebeard's Closet, with its plenishing
Of meat-hooks, sawdust, blood,
And wives that hung like fresh-dressed carcases--
Odd-fangled, most a butcher's, part
A faery chamber hazily seen
And hazily figured--on dark afternoons
And windy nights was visiting of the best.
Then, too, the pelt of hoofs
Out in the roaring darkness told
Of Herne the Hunter in his antlered helm
Galloping, as with despatches from the Pit,
Between his hell-born Hounds.
And Rip Van Winkle . . . often I lurked to hear,
Outside the long, low timbered, tarry wall,
The mutter and rumble of the trolling bowls
Down the lean plank, before they fluttered the pins;
For, listening, I could help him play
His wonderful game,
In those blue, booming hills, with Mariners
Refreshed from kegs not coopered in this our world.

But what were these so near,
So neighbourly fancies to the spell that brought
The run of Ali Baba's Cave
Just for the saying 'Open Sesame,'
With gold to measure, peck by peck,
In round, brown wooden stoups
You borrowed at the chandler's? . . . Or one time
Made you Aladdin's friend at school,
Free of his Garden of Jewels, Ring and Lamp
In perfect trim? . . . Or Ladies, fair
For all the embrowning scars in their white *******
Went labouring under some dread ordinance,
Which made them whip, and bitterly cry the while,
Strange Curs that cried as they,
Till there was never a Black ***** of all
Your consorting but might have gone
Spell-driven miserably for crimes
Done in the pride of womanhood and desire . . .
Or at the ghostliest altitudes of night,
While you lay wondering and acold,
Your sense was fearfully purged; and soon
Queen Labe, abominable and dear,
Rose from your side, opened the Box of Doom,
Scattered the yellow powder (which I saw
Like sulphur at the Docks in bulk),
And muttered certain words you could not hear;
And there! a living stream,
The brook you bathed in, with its weeds and flags
And cresses, glittered and sang
Out of the hearthrug over the nakedness,
Fair-scrubbed and decent, of your bedroom floor! . . .

I was--how many a time!--
That Second Calendar, Son of a King,
On whom 'twas vehemently enjoined,
Pausing at one mysterious door,
To pry no closer, but content his soul
With his kind Forty.  Yet I could not rest
For idleness and ungovernable Fate.
And the Black Horse, which fed on sesame
(That wonder-working word!),
Vouchsafed his back to me, and spread his vans,
And soaring, soaring on
From air to air, came charging to the ground
Sheer, like a lark from the midsummer clouds,
And, shaking me out of the saddle, where I sprawled
Flicked at me with his tail,
And left me blinded, miserable, distraught
(Even as I was in deed,
When doctors came, and odious things were done
On my poor tortured eyes
With lancets; or some evil acid stung
And wrung them like hot sand,
And desperately from room to room
Fumble I must my dark, disconsolate way),
To get to Bagdad how I might.  But there
I met with Merry Ladies.  O you three--
Safie, Amine, Zobeide--when my heart
Forgets you all shall be forgot!
And so we supped, we and the rest,
On wine and roasted lamb, rose-water, dates,
Almonds, pistachios, citrons.  And Haroun
Laughed out of his lordly beard
On Giaffar and Mesrour (I knew the Three
For all their Mossoul habits).  And outside
The Tigris, flowing swift
Like Severn bend for bend, twinkled and gleamed
With broken and wavering shapes of stranger stars;
The vast, blue night
Was murmurous with peris' plumes
And the leathern wings of genies; words of power
Were whispering; and old fishermen,
Casting their nets with prayer, might draw to shore
Dead loveliness:  or a prodigy in scales
Worth in the Caliph's Kitchen pieces of gold:
Or copper vessels, stopped with lead,
Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed,
In durance under potent charactry
Graven by the seal of Solomon the King . . .

Then, as the Book was glassed
In Life as in some olden mirror's quaint,
Bewildering angles, so would Life
Flash light on light back on the Book; and both
Were changed.  Once in a house decayed
From better days, harbouring an errant show
(For all its stories of dry-rot
Were filled with gruesome visitants in wax,
Inhuman, hushed, ghastly with Painted Eyes),
I wandered; and no living soul
Was nearer than the pay-box; and I stared
Upon them staring--staring.  Till at last,
Three sets of rafters from the streets,
I strayed upon a mildewed, rat-run room,
With the two Dancers, horrible and obscene,
Guarding the door:  and there, in a bedroom-set,
Behind a fence of faded crimson cords,
With an aspect of frills
And dimities and dishonoured privacy
That made you hanker and hesitate to look,
A Woman with her litter of Babes--all slain,
All in their nightgowns, all with Painted Eyes
Staring--still staring; so that I turned and ran
As for my neck, but in the street
Took breath.  The same, it seemed,
And yet not all the same, I was to find,
As I went up!  For afterwards,
Whenas I went my round alone--
All day alone--in long, stern, silent streets,
Where I might stretch my hand and take
Whatever I would:  still there were Shapes of Stone,
Motionless, lifelike, frightening--for the Wrath
Had smitten them; but they watched,
This by her melons and figs, that by his rings
And chains and watches, with the hideous gaze,
The Painted Eyes insufferable,
Now, of those grisly images; and I
Pursued my best-beloved quest,
Thrilled with a novel and delicious fear.
So the night fell--with never a lamplighter;
And through the Palace of the King
I groped among the echoes, and I felt
That they were there,
Dreadfully there, the Painted staring Eyes,
Hall after hall . . . Till lo! from far
A Voice!  And in a little while
Two tapers burning!  And the Voice,
Heard in the wondrous Word of God, was--whose?
Whose but Zobeide's,
The lady of my heart, like me
A True Believer, and like me
An outcast thousands of leagues beyond the pale! . . .

Or, sailing to the Isles
Of Khaledan, I spied one evenfall
A black blotch in the sunset; and it grew
Swiftly . . . and grew.  Tearing their beards,
The sailors wept and prayed; but the grave ship,
Deep laden with spiceries and pearls, went mad,
Wrenched the long tiller out of the steersman's hand,
And, turning broadside on,
As the most iron would, was haled and ******
Nearer, and nearer yet;
And, all awash, with horrible lurching leaps
Rushed at that Portent, casting a shadow now
That swallowed sea and sky; and then,
Anchors and nails and bolts
Flew screaming out of her, and with clang on clang,
A noise of fifty stithies, caught at the sides
Of the Magnetic Mountain; and she lay,
A broken bundle of firewood, strown piecemeal
About the waters; and her crew
Passed shrieking, one by one; and I was left
To drown.  All the long night I swam;
But in the morning, O, the smiling coast
Tufted with date-trees, meadowlike,
Skirted with shelving sands!  And a great wave
Cast me ashore; and I was saved alive.
So, giving thanks to God, I dried my clothes,
And, faring inland, in a desert place
I stumbled on an iron ring--
The fellow of fifty built into the Quays:
When, scenting a trap-door,
I dug, and dug; until my biggest blade
Stuck into wood.  And then,
The flight of smooth-hewn, easy-falling stairs,
Sunk in the naked rock!  The cool, clean vault,
So neat with niche on niche it might have been
Our beer-cellar but for the rows
Of brazen urns (like monstrous chemist's jars)
Full to the wide, squat throats
With gold-dust, but a-top
A layer of pickled-walnut-looking things
I knew for olives!  And far, O, far away,
The Princess of China languished!  Far away
Was marriage, with a Vizier and a Chief
Of Eunuchs and the privilege
Of going out at night
To play--unkenned, majestical, secure--
Where the old, brown, friendly river shaped
Like Tigris shore for shore!  Haply a Ghoul
Sat in the churchyard under a frightened moon,
A thighbone in his fist, and glared
At supper with a Lady:  she who took
Her rice with tweezers grain by grain.
Or you might stumble--there by the iron gates
Of the Pump Room--underneath the limes--
Upon Bedreddin in his shirt and drawers,
Just as the civil Genie laid him down.
Or those red-curtained panes,
Whence a tame cornet tenored it throatily
Of beer-pots and spittoons and new long pipes,
Might turn a caravansery's, wherein
You found Noureddin Ali, loftily drunk,
And that fair Persian, bathed in tears,
You'd not have given away
For all the diamonds in the Vale Perilous
You had that dark and disleaved afternoon
Escaped on a roc's claw,
Disguised like Sindbad--but in Christmas beef!
And all the blissful while
The schoolboy satchel at your hip
Was such a bulse of gems as should amaze
Grey-whiskered chapmen drawn
From over Caspian:  yea, the Chief Jewellers
Of Tartary and the bazaars,
Seething with traffic, of enormous Ind.--

Thus cried, thus called aloud, to the child heart
The magian East:  thus the child eyes
Spelled out the wizard message by the light
Of the sober, workaday hours
They saw, week in week out, pass, and still pass
In the sleepy Minster City, folded kind
In ancient Severn's arm,
Amongst her water-meadows and her docks,
Whose floating populace of ships--
Galliots and luggers, light-heeled brigantines,
Bluff barques and rake-hell fore-and-afters--brought
To her very doorsteps and geraniums
The scents of the World's End; the calls
That may not be gainsaid to rise and ride
Like fire on some high errand of the race;
The irresistible appeals
For comradeship that sound
Steadily from the irresistible sea.
Thus the East laughed and whispered, and the tale,
Telling itself anew
In terms of living, labouring life,
Took on the colours, busked it in the wear
Of life that lived and laboured; and Romance,
The Angel-Playmate, raining down
His golden influences
On all I saw, and all I dreamed and did,
Walked with me arm in arm,
Or left me, as one bediademed with straws
And bits of glass, to gladden at my heart
Who had the gift to seek and feel and find
His fiery-hearted presence everywhere.
Even so dear Hesper, bringer of all good things,
Sends the same silver dews
Of happiness down her dim, delighted skies
On some poor collier-hamlet--(mound on mound
Of sifted squalor; here a soot-throated stalk
Sullenly smoking over a row
Of flat-faced hovels; black in the gritty air
A web of rails and wheels and beams; with strings
Of hurtling, tipping trams)--
As on the amorous nightingales
And roses of Shiraz, or the walls and towers
Of Samarcand--the Ineffable--whence you espy
The splendour of Ginnistan's embattled spears,
Like listed lightnings.
Samarcand!
That name of names!  That star-vaned belvedere
Builded against the Chambers of the South!
That outpost on the Infinite!
And behold!
Questing therefrom, you knew not what wild tide
Might overtake you:  for one fringe,
One suburb, is stablished on firm earth; but one
Floats founded vague
In lubberlands delectable--isles of palm
And lotus, fortunate mains, far-shimmering seas,
The promise of wistful hills--
The shining, shifting Sovranties of Dream.

High on a mountain of enamell’d head—
Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed
Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,
Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees
With many a mutter’d “hope to be forgiven”
What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven—
Of rosy head, that towering far away
Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray
Of sunken suns at eve—at noon of night,
While the moon danc’d with the fair stranger light—
Uprear’d upon such height arose a pile
Of gorgeous columns on th’ uuburthen’d air,
Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile
Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,
And nursled the young mountain in its lair.
Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall
Thro’ the ebon air, besilvering the pall
Of their own dissolution, while they die—
Adorning then the dwellings of the sky.
A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,
Sat gently on these columns as a crown—
A window of one circular diamond, there,
Look’d out above into the purple air
And rays from God shot down that meteor chain
And hallow’d all the beauty twice again,
Save when, between th’ Empyrean and that ring,
Some eager spirit flapp’d his dusky wing.
But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen
The dimness of this world: that grayish green
That Nature loves the best for Beauty’s grave
Lurk’d in each cornice, round each architrave—
And every sculptured cherub thereabout
That from his marble dwelling peered out,
Seem’d earthly in the shadow of his niche—
Achaian statues in a world so rich?
Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis—
From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss
Of beautiful Gomorrah! Oh, the wave
Is now upon thee—but too late to save!
Sound loves to revel in a summer night:
Witness the murmur of the gray twilight
That stole upon the ear, in Eyraco,
Of many a wild star-gazer long ago—
That stealeth ever on the ear of him
Who, musing, gazeth on the distance dim,
And sees the darkness coming as a cloud—
Is not its form—its voice—most palpable and loud?
But what is this?—it cometh—and it brings
A music with it—’tis the rush of wings—
A pause—and then a sweeping, falling strain,
And Nesace is in her halls again.
From the wild energy of wanton haste
Her cheeks were flushing, and her lips apart;
The zone that clung around her gentle waist
Had burst beneath the heaving of her heart.
Within the centre of that hall to breathe
She paus’d and panted, Zanthe! all beneath,
The fairy light that kiss’d her golden hair
And long’d to rest, yet could but sparkle there!

Young flowers were whispering in melody
To happy flowers that night—and tree to tree;
Fountains were gushing music as they fell
In many a star-lit grove, or moon-light dell;
Yet silence came upon material things—
Fair flowers, bright waterfalls and angel wings—
And sound alone that from the spirit sprang
Bore burthen to the charm the maiden sang:

  “Neath blue-bell or streamer—
    Or tufted wild spray
  That keeps, from the dreamer,
    The moonbeam away—
  Bright beings! that ponder,
    With half-closing eyes,
  On the stars which your wonder
    Hath drawn from the skies,
  Till they glance thro’ the shade, and
    Come down to your brow
  Like—eyes of the maiden
    Who calls on you now—
  Arise! from your dreaming
    In violet bowers,
  To duty beseeming
    These star-litten hours—
  And shake from your tresses
    Encumber’d with dew

  The breath of those kisses
    That cumber them too—
  (O! how, without you, Love!
    Could angels be blest?)
  Those kisses of true love
    That lull’d ye to rest!
  Up! shake from your wing
    Each hindering thing:
  The dew of the night—
    It would weigh down your flight;
  And true love caresses—
    O! leave them apart!
  They are light on the tresses,
    But lead on the heart.

  Ligeia! Ligeia!
    My beautiful one!
  Whose harshest idea
    Will to melody run,
  O! is it thy will
    On the breezes to toss?
  Or, capriciously still,
    Like the lone Albatross,
  Incumbent on night
    (As she on the air)
  To keep watch with delight
    On the harmony there?

  Ligeia! wherever
    Thy image may be,
  No magic shall sever
    Thy music from thee.
  Thou hast bound many eyes
    In a dreamy sleep—
  But the strains still arise
    Which thy vigilance keep—

  The sound of the rain
    Which leaps down to the flower,
  And dances again
    In the rhythm of the shower—
  The murmur that springs
    From the growing of grass
  Are the music of things—
    But are modell’d, alas!
  Away, then, my dearest,
    O! hie thee away
  To springs that lie clearest
    Beneath the moon-ray—
  To lone lake that smiles,
    In its dream of deep rest,
  At the many star-isles
  That enjewel its breast—
  Where wild flowers, creeping,
    Have mingled their shade,
  On its margin is sleeping
    Full many a maid—
  Some have left the cool glade, and
    Have slept with the bee—
  Arouse them, my maiden,
    On moorland and lea—

  Go! breathe on their slumber,
    All softly in ear,
  The musical number
    They slumber’d to hear—
  For what can awaken
    An angel so soon
  Whose sleep hath been taken
    Beneath the cold moon,
  As the spell which no slumber
    Of witchery may test,
  The rhythmical number
    Which lull’d him to rest?”

Spirits in wing, and angels to the view,
A thousand seraphs burst th’ Empyrean thro’,
Young dreams still hovering on their drowsy flight—
Seraphs in all but “Knowledge,” the keen light
That fell, refracted, thro’ thy bounds afar,
O death! from eye of God upon that star;
Sweet was that error—sweeter still that death—
Sweet was that error—ev’n with us the breath
Of Science dims the mirror of our joy—
To them ’twere the Simoom, and would destroy—
For what (to them) availeth it to know
That Truth is Falsehood—or that Bliss is Woe?
Sweet was their death—with them to die was rife
With the last ecstasy of satiate life—
Beyond that death no immortality—
But sleep that pondereth and is not “to be”—
And there—oh! may my weary spirit dwell—
Apart from Heaven’s Eternity—and yet how far from Hell!

What guilty spirit, in what shrubbery dim
Heard not the stirring summons of that hymn?
But two: they fell: for heaven no grace imparts
To those who hear not for their beating hearts.
A maiden-angel and her seraph-lover—
O! where (and ye may seek the wide skies over)
Was Love, the blind, near sober Duty known?
Unguided Love hath fallen—’mid “tears of perfect moan.”

He was a goodly spirit—he who fell:
A wanderer by mossy-mantled well—
A gazer on the lights that shine above—
A dreamer in the moonbeam by his love:
What wonder? for each star is eye-like there,
And looks so sweetly down on Beauty’s hair—
And they, and ev’ry mossy spring were holy
To his love-haunted heart and melancholy.
The night had found (to him a night of wo)
Upon a mountain crag, young Angelo—
Beetling it bends athwart the solemn sky,
And scowls on starry worlds that down beneath it lie.
Here sate he with his love—his dark eye bent
With eagle gaze along the firmament:
Now turn’d it upon her—but ever then
It trembled to the orb of EARTH again.

“Ianthe, dearest, see! how dim that ray!
How lovely ’tis to look so far away!
She seemed not thus upon that autumn eve
I left her gorgeous halls—nor mourned to leave,
That eve—that eve—I should remember well—
The sun-ray dropped, in Lemnos with a spell
On th’ Arabesque carving of a gilded hall
Wherein I sate, and on the draperied wall—
And on my eyelids—O, the heavy light!
How drowsily it weighed them into night!
On flowers, before, and mist, and love they ran
With Persian Saadi in his Gulistan:
But O, that light!—I slumbered—Death, the while,
Stole o’er my senses in that lovely isle
So softly that no single silken hair
Awoke that slept—or knew that he was there.

“The last spot of Earth’******I trod upon
Was a proud temple called the Parthenon;
More beauty clung around her columned wall
Then even thy glowing ***** beats withal,
And when old Time my wing did disenthral
Thence sprang I—as the eagle from his tower,
And years I left behind me in an hour.
What time upon her airy bounds I hung,
One half the garden of her globe was flung
Unrolling as a chart unto my view—
Tenantless cities of the desert too!
Ianthe, beauty crowded on me then,
And half I wished to be again of men.”

“My Angelo! and why of them to be?
A brighter dwelling-place is here for thee—
And greener fields than in yon world above,
And woman’s loveliness—and passionate love.”
“But list, Ianthe! when the air so soft
Failed, as my pennoned spirit leapt aloft,
Perhaps my brain grew dizzy—but the world
I left so late was into chaos hurled,
Sprang from her station, on the winds apart,
And rolled a flame, the fiery Heaven athwart.
Methought, my sweet one, then I ceased to soar,
And fell—not swiftly as I rose before,
But with a downward, tremulous motion thro’
Light, brazen rays, this golden star unto!
Nor long the measure of my falling hours,
For nearest of all stars was thine to ours—
Dread star! that came, amid a night of mirth,
A red Daedalion on the timid Earth.”

“We came—and to thy Earth—but not to us
Be given our lady’s bidding to discuss:
We came, my love; around, above, below,
Gay fire-fly of the night we come and go,
Nor ask a reason save the angel-nod
She grants to us as granted by her God—
But, Angelo, than thine gray Time unfurled
Never his fairy wing o’er fairer world!
Dim was its little disk, and angel eyes
Alone could see the phantom in the skies,
When first Al Aaraaf knew her course to be
Headlong thitherward o’er the starry sea—
But when its glory swelled upon the sky,
As glowing Beauty’s bust beneath man’s eye,
We paused before the heritage of men,
And thy star trembled—as doth Beauty then!”

Thus in discourse, the lovers whiled away
The night that waned and waned and brought no day.
They fell: for Heaven to them no hope imparts
Who hear not for the beating of their hearts.

A hot toddy…a hot bath
Is the way she drew me home
To the steamy waters of love
All covered with foam

My Nymph of Nysa in white garments as tight as skin
Revealed piercing and protruding ******* within

With these bedazzled ******* all a glow
She led me to her fountains below

“Lay in my waters so I may bestow
Oil to your muscles from crown to toe”

Though weary from tumultuous day
Healing hands restored strength vigor to play

“Are you able Captain to fill my folds
So I may howl like the Sirens of old?”

Rising like Poseidon out of the surf
I placed her on my four columned berth

Opening wide her ivory legs she called for my girth
“Come, My Captain unload your treasures and bring forth great mirth”

A hot toddy…a hot bath
Is the way she drew me home
To the steamy waters of love
All covered with foam

Call us perverted,
But read on first,
Then, by the end,
After our verse,
Call us your worst:
***** old men, gutter snipes,
Lecherous gawkers,
Cause we gaze in wonder and awe
At girls from eighteen to ninety-five.
Don't step back and feign aghast,
Whisper covert tsks, and gasp,
What? Oh such ***** old men!
But we are most the same.

We don't ogle or use a scope
Waiting behind a bush at night,
Til the lights go on
Through windows known to be undrawn.

We don't visit public pools
With goggles and a snorkel,
That's just sick, that's not us,
Our admiration's not so twisted,
We grew up to respect the sisters.

We wonder at the parade of beauty,
So pleasing to our eyes,
They dress to allure
Younger looks,
They swagger, tilt and sashay past
With legs as long as trees,
No VPL to interrupt
The curving imagination.
Compare it to one window-shopping,
Admiring wares and worth;
But please, read every line I wrote
Before bellowing, Pervert.

If we were eighteen years again,
We're lads out plowing fields,
Sowing wild grains,
Reaping refrains of They're boys just being boys.

We had our ancient pleasures,
Still comparable to now;
The lushness of the ripened fruit
Hanging on the bough,
Is for younger hands, not ours.

The columned temples of runway models
With flying buttress thighs,
And the bull-frog fronts and volleyball stunts
Please, but we don't pry.

          (We're not a ***** grabbing lot,
          That's not how we usually talk,
          In fact I haven't shared these thoughts,
          I'm reluctant to do so now).

You know you can't blame us
For what a blind man sees;
The cleavage, high-slits and commando style,
The augmentations meant to beguile
Has caught us in crossfire.

The soft unbleached skin,
The ***** and the neck,
The falling, twirling tresses,
Grace the backs of backless dresses.
Wear grotesques to dissuade us,
To disapprove our ageless looks.

Our eyes don't linger on the bust,
We don't display old men's lust,
In fact we're rather obsequious,
To the point where we're air,
You'd not notice that we're there.
But we are, and we look;
And I remember what it took
To be young and on the hunt
For the Yeti, Loch Ness, or alien jump.

Don't tell your friends we're perverted,
Scurrilous id-focused men;
We're neither. We're average fellows
Watching from the stands.

Yes, our daughters are older than
The babes seen on the screens,
But that has naught to do with us,
We still think like eighteen.

We watch re-runs of Mary Tyler Moore,
Drink tepid tea with toast and jam
To the credits of The Golden Girls;
But when the grandkids come to visit,
We take them for ice-cream,
Or if I take poodle to walk,
They pool like thirsty fleas.
It isn't my intent to bait, but I have eyes to see,
Those girls somewhat eighteen,
Like to please by teasing:
     I really like your wire rims.
Their eyes grip, the wind flips,
Their hands soft and supple...
I'm at a loss-
What's a man to do-
Between forty and forever?

This reaper's aged,
The harvest's in.
The grain that bowed the straw
Has now been threshed,
And milled to flour.
Add heat to rise again.

Sending chills this tortured spine,
as aches precede the worded fiction
Sorted truth does rest sublime
beneath the light of benediction
Broken dreams of compass flair,
directions cast a blinded waning
Trusted roots abridge the square
of all that’s lost and is remaining

Washed along this fertile beach
of sanded hope and history
Tasting o’ thy patterned speech
as common phrases come to me
Desolate my cornered mind
of images I pray be true
Dangling the lost to find
retaliation in my view

Pray, oh be, as life does rattle
chains of only mist to turn
Laughter like some long fought battle,
in amongst we tend to learn
When the calling comes so random,
names are lost on open seas
One by one in columned tandem,
drenched of hell’s insanities

Take me to thy deepest haven,
so that I may find the end
Black as night o’ windswept raven,
come to me now once again
Razored claw and broken arrows,
filled with such, the violence
Playing through the endless narrows,
falling to my own expense

This, a life that's not worth living,
not this day, not anymore
Breaths so tethered in their giving,
pull the drapes and close the door
Take a seat your exits' waiting,
frozen hinges squeak in time
Find the map for navigating,
somehow through this wicked rhyme

Follow me, I know the heading,
down this staircase, up the hall
End those futile tears you're shedding,
she's not waiting for your call
Through this doorway stenciled broken,
toss your heart there on the floor
It is but a useless token,
you'll not need it anymore

You’re now privy to the meaning,
whether you do understand
Motioned light, this night is leaning,
let it take you by the hand
Now of time and missing portal,
through the lens of sights unknown
Nothing whispers you are mortal,
for this day you have been shown

Silver, cool, harsh rock-smooth as rolled steel on the horizon defies the cold blue-violet sky of Mars as the pinpoint dots of distant white suns circle in wonder of the scene.

Green mist hanging from the verdant leaves of the thick mountain forest permeates the humid cool air of a rain of a few minutes past above the soggy moss, gray-green rock, deep red brown trail, columned by mighty yet yielding deep-colored trunks.

Glistening snow reflects on each crystal the apparition of a cold white moon, blinding in glorious circles the eye which beholds the perimeter of sentinel black-green poines, opening the snow-hidden field to that which it mirrors.

Deep sea-salty blue-green transparency softens the pink bottom to a wavy yellow-pink-yellow-pink-banded black-white-black skittering across the deep pink-yellow-pink green blades waving in time to the yellow-pink-yellow deep sea, never leave.

On this day Cernan lands from his Gemini IX flight with Stafford conducting a two-hour space walk in that void.

I get to see the world in unbounded manners and patterns of oceans crashing down on the pages and endless endless beam of lines strolling towards nowhere leading to the path of horror and agony creating a void of dreams and memories columned against the walls of our ideas, I have achieved total enlightenment through the craft of my words, and the bending of my mind:

i am a writer of no demands.
a writer of no in betweens.
a writer of pure passion.
a writer of reckless consumption.
a writer with no roof but the trees towering on the hills beside the mountains endlessly inspiring ideas and visions of no pragmatic truth.
a writer with anything but a candle for his hope and a box for his cigarettes.
a writer with no pen but his mind and his tortured soul.
a writer who believes that religion is immoral.

I am the starving writer and I'm full of cliche.

stagnate-
up the creek par se
every which way
I'd use alliteration
for this rash
but its not homogenous
instead in separate stashes-
painfully buoyant idle and robust;
ducks

Brain fried
like a thousand flies,
above the floating trash,
better identified-
the outskirts
of a vague form
than the innocuous worm
found in straw surrounded ponds
in wiggling room -more than enough;
stuck

come in short
into the common fort
to flaunt, gauge, and gauze
columned concerns-
the core and the cause
for which there was none

yet allowed slow a ripple
to echo, reverse and to dribble
to re-emerge the subtlety
of a moving hill

It's so "fun" trying to fit these hugemongous Roman names into iambic pentametre.



(sonnet #MMMMMMMDCCXXIII)


So, read an essay on erm, Virgil, frail
As thinking THAT meant aught, and for pretense
Is't lo, Thucydides, to spose I'd sense,
Petrarca's life in um, a nutshell's scale
Of knowledge, even la, Justinian's tale--
Since haunted by those cobbled streets, and hence,
If not the air of Roman days, fr'intents
Those columned cities sages knew t'avail.
And either that, or Valentines in tour
Have ta'en my spirit from me, til I view
All we had joyed in ere as from as twere
A colder distance, seeing, yet voiceless to
Effect, life upside-down, or mine in poor
Scuse, e'en as April haunts the thought life'd woo.

21Feb19a

We share a tale,
   of vaulted views
and columned pews.
   With dappled light
through glass bejewelled
    comes solemn rays,
shining down
    on kneeling few
and dusted air.
   Though far between
our different times
   the hallowed halls
our paths have shared
   on shores we've seen,
though separately.

I’ve been reading a lot of poetry for quite a few years and maybe this is just me, as in some quirky bias I suffer, or misapprehension about poetry, but much of what I read doesn’t feel much like poetry at all. Now, one can rightfully argue that poetry can be anything, and that’s okay because if we take a look at poetry’s history what we see is a continuum of thesis and antithesis, flagging us who read the stuff that anything goes. So where does that leave us? I might argue that since there are so many distinct kinds of poems that a definition alludes us all together and when we hear the noun p o e t r y, we can only assign the familiar poetic shape as its definitive territory, meaning a few words in a line that are stacked up on each other, which we generally think of as verse with multiplied stacks fulfilling our expectation of poem. I’m thinking if we want to go with that poetry digresses to a linguistic charmless flat land characteristic of prose, relative to at least some of the poetic writing that is highly lyrical, sonically potent, novel, intonated, linguistically muscular, and dynamically connective to the reader. Poetry can take creative liberties that prose customarily does not or cannot take. Poetry may have different linguistic needs like different kinds of English. For example, articles may be absent towards a more concentrated synthesis for phrasing, a lyrical lilt, stream of consciousness boarding on the abstract et al.
Being a poet is born of a feeling that a face may be a liquid surface. That time is malleable, and that there is always something going on in-between the lines gleaned from inexplicable moments of inner disjuncture or a hesitating breath.
Poetry may facilitate that mind may emerge from the concrete objective into the mirrors of the marvelous or uncanny like a burped half avocado and fish head at 2 am in the morning transmuting into a torrent of dormice and angels in delirious avenues of falling stars and looking glasses.
Poetry may address intersectional dimensionality populated by visions and voices of primordial undercurrents, that stories may not lend themselves to. Poetry may be metalinguistic and a fragment of the inner life both collective and individuated. Poetry may work from the inside out without referencing the temporal, locational, and name it and claim it nouns and pronouns typical of prose. So, here’s the poetry problem. Why is it that 99% of the poetry I read here and places like it remain basically written just like prose, linguistically and sonically vacuous, largely bereft of similes, metaphors and all the other strategic devices that can make poetry progressive, inventive and deeply resonate, except of course that they are stacked and columned giving the appearance of poems?
~~~~~
EXAMPLES OF POEMS THAT CAN BE CALLED POETRY
Ballad in A
BY CATHY PARK HONG
A Kansan plays cards, calls Marshall
a crawdad, that barb lands that rascal a slap;
that Kansan ******* scats,
camps back at caballada ranch.
Hangs kack, ax, and camp hat.
Kansan’s nag mad and rants can’t bask,
can’t bacchanal and garland a lass,
can’t at last brag can crack Law’s *****,
Kansan’s cantata rang at that ramada ranch,
Mañana, Kansan snarls, I’ll have an armada
and thwart Law’s brawn,
slam Law a **** mass war path.
Marshall’s a marksman, maps Kansan’s track,
calm as a shaman, sharp as a hawk,
Says: That dastard Kansan’s had
and gnaws lamb fatback.
At dawn, Marshall stalks that ranch,
packs a gat and blasts Kansan’s ***
and Kansan gasps, blasts back.
A flag ***** at half-mast.~~~~~
Ocean of Earth

BY GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE
TRANSLATED BY RON PADGETT
To G. de Chirico
I have built a house in the middle of the Ocean
Its windows are the rivers flowing from my eyes
Octopi are crawling all over where the walls are
Hear their triple hearts beat and their beaks peck against the windowpanes
House of dampness
House of burning
Season’s fastness
Season singing
The airplanes are laying eggs
Watch out for the dropping of the anchor
Watch out for the shooting black ichor
It would be good if you were to come from the sky
The sky’s honeysuckle is climbing
The earthly octopi are throbbing
And so very many of us have become our own gravediggers
Pale octopi of the chalky waves O octopi with pale beaks
Around the house is this ocean that you know well
And is never still
Translated from the French
Source: Poetry (October 2015)~~~~~

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
BY OCEAN VUONG
i
Tell me it was for the hunger
& nothing less. For hunger is to give
the body what it knows
it cannot keep. That this amber light
whittled down by another war
is all that pins my hand
to your chest.
i
You, drowning
between my arms —
stay.
You, pushing your body
into the river
only to be left
with yourself —
stay.
i
I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after
backhanding
mother, then taking a chainsaw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel
in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls.
And so I learned that a man, in ******, was the closest thing
to surrender.
i
Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.
Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn.
Say autumn despite the green
in your eyes. Beauty despite
daylight. Say you’d **** for it. Unbreakable dawn
mounting in your throat.
My thrashing beneath you
like a sparrow stunned
with falling.
i
Dusk: a blade of honey between our shadows, draining.
i
I wanted to disappear — so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was still alive. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast cancer ribbon on his keychain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky — to hold every flying & falling at once.
i
Say amen. Say amend.
Say yes. Say yes
anyway.
i
In the shower, sweating under cold water, I scrubbed & scrubbed.
i
In the life before this one, you could tell
two people were in love
because when they drove the pickup
over the bridge, their wings
would grow back just in time.
Some days I am still inside the pickup.
Some days I keep waiting.
i
It’s not too late. Our heads haloed
with gnats & summer too early
to leave any marks.
Your hand under my shirt as static
intensifies on the radio.
Your other hand pointing
your daddy’s revolver
to the sky. Stars falling one
by one in the cross hairs.
This means I won’t be
afraid if we’re already
here. Already more
than skin can hold. That a body
beside a body
must make a field
full of ticking. That your name
is only the sound of clocks
being set back another hour
& morning
finds our clothes
on your mother’s front porch, shed
like week-old lilies.
Source: Poetry (December 2014)
~~~~~
SOMETIMES WE’VE GOT TO READ IT TO KNOW WHAT IT IS.

The same Madonnas,
the same pitying faces,
the same arched necks
of the same saints...

Clear it all
for a new palette.
Stone over pine blaze,
fringed gentian blot.
Broken-columned sun,
splayed in glade sand.
Drift water stroke.

Rescind
the School of Athens,
the Madonnas,
the arched necks.

What can they say
about lilies plunged
in the moon's syrup?

At lunchtime pigeons and pinstripes dance with Rockette syncopation in front of Radio City
following the lead of thirty balloons encased
in vinyl tugged down the 50th Street station.

A chauffeured limousine pops out
a freshly groomed and leashed Pomeranian
seeking reunion with her dowager owner
getting purple locks and cuticles nearby.

At the columned entrance of Manhattan Bridge
two lovers kiss at the Canal Street stoplight
while a Vespa owner stops near the pedestrian
walk to hitch the love of his life in full stride.

Black children in bowlers and their Sunday finest
share a car in the Connie Island Cyclone
with Hasidic eyngls from Avenue J
carefully protecting their yarmulkes.

In the South Bronx the children of 136th Street
practice belly flops on an abandoned mattress
before chickening out on the adjacent kiddie pool
decorated with aqua waves, clown fish and mermaids.

The Monday field trip will transport ten
young Harlem poets to the Schomburg Library
to eulogize when Maya Angelou and Amiri Baraka
danced a jig on the ashes of Langston Hughes.

One will write a Christmas story about the time
Richard the reindeer took the Roosevelt Island
tram to bring  presents to the orphans
after Santa’s sled had fallen apart.

Down in my sealed off heart
I build a fortress of many parts
With great gates and unbreachable walls
Tall towers and deep columned halls
Measure upon measure to ensure
My fragile heart might endure

“We’re gonna move?!” was the plot twist
In the remake comedy “Cheaper by the Dozen.”
Never would I have thought, though, that in 2007,
In the family room of 170 Wildflower Creek Drive,
My mother would propose the idea of moving
To us three children.

The idea of moving was exciting yet scary to me,
Being still under double digits in age.
The split-foyer house had always been my default refuge,
Where I always felt drawn to, if ever distant for however long.
The closet under the split-foyer stairwell, the red basement carpet,
The flowery wall paper tracing the walls of the second floor.
Knees bent on the off-white couch cushion in the family room
Spying on our front yard and the rows of houses,
Which columned to infinity from what I could see.
Friendly get-togethers, a Super Bowl XL bash, birthday parties,
The Japanese Juniper rooted towards the up-slanted corner of the black-tinted fence.
Our backyard’s deck with stairs, all that I would soon have to desert
For what seemed best at the time.
A room to myself sounded like a luxury,
But a lot of times, when things seem too good to be true in life,
I ponder if any strings are ever attached, invisibly at work.

All that we owned that had any contact with the McDonagh name,
Except for what kept the house together,
Either entered storage for an interim period of house-searching
Or tagged along to the Sun Crest apartments off Route 11-South.
I never thought I’d see our basement’s two-door, internally connected closet
Emptied and spacious enough to make circular paths in-and-out.
I remember the night that my family and I officially rode away
From the neighborhood property.
The glowing heart of the house, the foyer’s brown chandelier,
Discoed yellow-brown, unshapely-stretched reflections of light
Through the indented individual crystal-like brown glass
That cocooned the non-majestic lightbulbs inward.
As our van and family pulled away from the driveway,
Like the south pole of a magnet from the north pole,
All I had left to offer the house that provided me shelter and memories
Was a “this-isn’t-fair” glance as I leaned my head in the back seat of the van,
Resting my glasses on the backseat window as if some magnetism
Penetrated the glass to remind me that bonds, whether in science or love,
Don’t break easily.

In the summer of 2008, my family and I made the best
Out of the small apartment space,
Though thoughts of Wildflower Creek still lingered.
Many distractions befell me, however:
My 11th birthday party that July, jogging around our apartment building,
Video games, other visits with friends,
And, I cannot forget, the many houses I had to explore in the area
Before my parents settled on one and were not outbid by others.
Even though today I would not mind touring houses,
My mind was a million miles away from wanting to foot around stairs and rooms,
Even though it was necessary.

By the end of August 2008, we collectively agreed upon a house
And had many close neighbors help us move into a new familial abode.
The postal address claimed the area to be part of Kearneysville,
Though on the outskirts of Martinsburg.
This house, bricked-faced with touches of burgundy,
Was favored according to the equidistance
Regarding most of our out-of-house activities.

Assuredly enough, I have well-acquainted myself with this location by now,
My eyes always wanting to look out my bedroom window
To see the array of the day: the appearance of the outdoor skies,
The apex of the Veterans Affairs’ chapel building,
The gray fence of our posterior neighbor,
Two slender black-walnut trees intimately planted next to each other.
The Veterans Affairs facility’s bugle blows always annoyed me every 8 a.m.,
But, 10 years later, that’s the least of my troubles and I rarely hear it anymore myself.
At this point, I cannot tally all of the blessings that have entered this house
And that have come from establishing new roots under a new roof:
Two Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl appearances, the dawning growth of my outgoing spirit,
My theatre premiere, encountering new faces, learning how to drive in the Quad Graphics’ parking lot, taking advantage of new activities, visiting places I never thought I’d travel to,
The loss of our dog Jessie (2004-2013), the gaining of our present canine companion Bailey (b.2012), the election of Pope Francis, my first paid job, the arrival of the 2010’s;
My twelve-year Upward basketball legacy drew to a close in this Kearneysville residence (2004-2016); the historical election of President Barack Obama as the first president with African-American roots; even experiencing higher education in recent months.
This Kearneysville house has provided more than shelter; in its expansive vacuum and detailed
Indentations where potential dust may cling, this house has provided me
With the rest I need to continue life;
This house has helped me see
The profound blessing of the simple, ordinary mandatories.
In this house, I have been taught and disciplined
To implement my stewardship, to care with my own hands and being
In the hope that this dormant structure will continue to provide support
For my family circle and those to follow.
Sometimes I have been out the door so frequently
That this house has almost become less of “home.”

The impending decade-anniversary of family, house, and life
May never match a Rosary’s decade,
But both are met as devotions of resilience.
As a church official said,
“Home is a relationship more than a place.”
However, memories or relationships can take place
Under ceilings.
How much harder, as years progress,
Might it be to change my default houser?

...cuz a nagging bladder isn't cool.



(sonnet #MMMMMMMDCLXXX)


From Rimsky-Korskov's strains wi' half a sense
Of "magic" in Sheher'zade's fervid tale,
To Kenny Chesney's singing in betrayl
Was it of being kind to some soul fr'intents?
To class'cal notes which yield me lo, from thence
Fair visions of huge columned courts' detail,
To ah, the Scriptures--Romans to avail
Sense past all foolish thoughts and vain pretense.
So drift off on that, eh?  No.  Yes, tis poor,
But THIS wee stanza tugged at me, or to
Effect the first lines rolled across in tour
My silent tongue, til sleep feigned it would do.
Yet earbuds in, hard rock came blasting fer
Good taste in and, I'd rather sleep anew.

31Jan19a

Though night and day cover the same earth,
Their worlds are far unrelated;
Yes, the two portals of time
I know have skies the same,
But what one attracts
The other scares away.

Having lived a campus-student life,
Later departing to seek rest,
I was attracted to Scarborough’s halls
When darkness would ink the above
And when the daytime student traffic
Minimized, which freed space hard to claim
With the sun exposed.

Rays of LED lights flash
On the library’s main outside portico,
Students’ shoulders magnetized to the foundational pillars,
Bodies slanted, neutral-faced and minds set for commuting home.

Perfect!  Though other peers plan according to the daily rush,
I know there will be a chair for me and a platform to stack my books
Inside the library.
I neck my head heavenward
As I ascend the split-foyer stairs,
Seeing if others descend so as not to run over or be run over.

The second-floor is a puzzle,
A maze of paths edging the perimeter,
The space columned with light-brown shelves of books.
Let’s see: Study room?  Taken.
A free table along the main communal hall of the second floor?
Eh, I feel watched there.
Aha!  A fine venue!
A single-person desk, an attached light,
Room on the desk for layering my backpack’s own library,
And side wooden indentations to conceal my peripheral vision.
I never would have expected to lust for nightly library moments,
But I believe, now, that my visits were past due.

Laid with words
   the writers stone
A fortress was columned
  my only real home

The poetry safe
  as it stammered and tried
As my feelings unbridled
  from the outsiders lies

Each year added substance
  to this home of the verse
My thoughts never silenced
  or my feelings there terse

All that’s needed to go there
  blind captured belief
All that’s needed to know
  is that time is the thief

My vision unshaken
  from this chair with two wheels
The advice from the experts
  to wither and yield

But my place more than sacred
  an invincible throne
Independent of body
  times seed now unsown

And the moment before
  I take my last breath
I will enter forever
  where before I had left

The trumpets will sound
  as immortality calls
To that space then my refuge
  the sum of it all

As the memories chase reason
  the facts storm again
But the tents of my solitude
  keep out their wind

For generations that follow
  and their children that ask
This place I now dwell in
  is for all hard and fast

Just believe in its message
  and its fortune to change
Just believe in transcendence
  with all things the same

Until the day that that final
  trumpet may blow
And everything seen
  is all there’s to know

Your message then solid
  as the door opens wide
And those things that are yours
  to the heavens arrive

And the joy that you feel
  thinking back on it all
From that place deep inside
—where first destiny called

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2015)

Laid solid with words
  the writers stone
A fortress was columned
  my only real home

The poetry was safe there
  it stammered and tried
As my feelings unbridled
  from the outsiders lies

Each year added layers
  to this home of the verse
My thoughts never silenced
  or my feelings there terse

All that’s needed to go there
  …unfettered belief
All that’s needed to know
  is that time is the thief

My vision unshaken
  from this chair with two wheels
The advice from the experts
  “to wither and yield”

But my place more than sacred
  an invincible throne
Independent of body
  times seed to unsow

And the moment before
  I take my last breath
I will enter forever
  where before I had left

The trumpets will sound
  as immortality calls
To that space then my refuge
  the sum of it all

As the memories unreason
  the facts storm again
But the tents of my solitude
  keep out their wind

For generations that follow
  and their children that ask
This place I now dwell in
  for all hard and fast

Just believe in its message
  and its fortune to change
Just believe in transcendence
  with all things the same

Until the day that that final
  trumpet may blow
And all that you’ve loved
  is all there’s to know

Your message then solid
  as the door opens wide
And those moments you’ve gifted
  to the heavens arrive

And the joy that you feel
  thinking back on it all
From that place deep inside
—where first destiny called

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2015)